Free Republic

How do I find a thread talking about the news story I've been hearing about? I've looked for an hour and turn up nothing. Social Security changes affecting spouse loophole passed in this recent budget.

Technicality could jeopardize the agreement; James Rosen reports on 'Special Report'

Is Mayor Rahm Emanuel preparing to exempt some homeowners from his big new property tax? A series of fascinating signals is emanating from City Hall that suggest, to ease passage of his $500 million plan through the City Council, the mayor indeed is preparing a plan—being dubbed internally the "bungalow belt exemption"—to give a break to owners of middle-income residences. No figures are available as to exactly who would be covered. The Emanuel administration is in high message-control mode since word of the pending tax hike leaked out earlier in the week, with the mayor apparently trying to float ideas...

Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to President Obama, purportedly saved $200,000 on a Chicago real estate deal by taking advantage of a tax loophole she openly opposes and actively worked to eliminate, according to a watchdog investigation. The investigation, conducted by the Chicago-based Better Government Association (BGA), focused on the 2013 sale of a $160 million luxury high-rise in which Jarrett pocketed more than $1 million in profits. Jarrett served as an executive at a Chicago real estate development firm called the Habitat Company prior to joining the White House as a senior adviser to Obama in 2009. While there,...

The federal government said Tuesday it will soon move to close a loophole in Obamacare that could allow big employers to refuse to cover employees' hospitalizations. That loophole is significant because hospital-stay costs can quickly become high. The loophole is linked to Obamacare rules that will require mid- to large-size employers starting in 2015 to offer affordable health plans to employers or pay a fine.

The Lois G. Lerner emails released this month revealed a potentially huge loophole in federal open-records practices when an IRS tech staffer acknowledged that the agency doesn’t regularly store — and never checks — instant message chats as official government records. Analysts say there is no question that the Internal Revenue Service and all other federal agencies should be storing chats and even cellphone text messages that may constitute official government documents, but a check by The Washington Times suggests that hardly any agency is doing so. Of 17 agencies surveyed by The Times, just two said they had policies

The Obama administration has decided to give extra time to Americans who say that they are unable to enroll in health-care plans through the federal insurance marketplace by the March 31 deadline. Federal officials confirmed Tuesday evening that all consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who do not finish by Monday, will have until about mid-April to ask for an extension. Under the new rules, people will be able to qualify for an extension by checking a blue box on HealthCare.gov to indicate that they tried to enroll before the deadline. This method will rely...

The Obama Administration on Tuesday proposed new regulations that add to the list of benefits not subject to reforms under the president’s healthcare law. A draft rule issued jointly by the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury is the latest in a series of tweaks to the Affordable Care Act announced just days before major parts of the law are to take effect. The regulations, published in Tuesday's Federal Register, amend the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which laid out a category of “excepted benefits.” These include workers compensation or disability coverage, accidental death...

Above: Illegal aliens made out like banditos thanks to Harry Reid and Senate Democrats. Disabled vets? Not so much.- They actually did it. They are on the record. Senate Democrats, led by their filibuster-slaying dictator Harry Reid, actually put the interests of illegal aliens above those of our disabled military veterans.Let that sink in for a moment. Now the details: The two-year budget deal brokered by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, would cut military pensions by $6 billion over ten years. Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, joined by several others in his party, tried...

Mimicking the 'bump fire' technique that can be utilized to fire a semi-auto rifle nonstop (from the hip), a new $6000 rifle from Slide-Fire keeps the stock (and your trigger finger) steady while the rest of the gun moves with the recoil, pulling the trigger against your stationary finger and producing the desired hail of gunfire...  The weapon utilizes loopholes in federal firearms law, whereas the stock of such a gun is simply not regulated as to it's movement/or lack of, nor how this is now being utilized to produce a full-auto effect... just the traditional mechanical elements of...

I am not sure when the people of Egypt became more worldly than the people here in America but it would seem they have it figured out. Betsy Hiel tweeted a picture of a banner that has been hoisted in Tahrir Square that reads “Obama Supports Terrorism” in both English and Arabic. The banner has been placed in preparation for Sunday’s scheduled protests against Mohamed Morsi and The Muslim Brotherhood. Read more: http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/06/the-egyptian-people-proclaim-barack-obama-supports-terrorists/#ixzz2XjBkZmcu

We can’t possibly expect our Senators to read a 1200 page bill before voting on it. Can we? Well Thank God Ted Cruz read it. Not only did Cruz read it but he schooled anyone who would listen from the Senate floor on Tuesday.

Another loophole inserted into the new version of the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill allows Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (or any of her successors) to nix the construction of a required border security fence if she does not find it to be an "appropriate" use of resources. The new version of the bill was introduced via a so-called “border surge” amendment from Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND), with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repackaging the whole bill into the amendment.

I continuously see claims that "we must close the gunshow loophole" in the MSM. But on FR most people seem to assume there is no such loophole. I've tried to research exactly what this loophole is supposed to be, but one side seems to take its existence as self-evident and therefore needing no definition, and the other as an equally obvious negative. I would really appreciate an explanation of what this loophole is supposed to be, and perhaps of why it isn't one.

Stuart Lieberman, a real estate attorney in New Jersey, once said the following about wording in a deed that allowed construction on open space designated land: “That’s not a loophole; it’s the Lincoln Tunnel.” Lieberman made what appeared to be a loophole in a deed understandable through a concrete example. In the same way, the widely disseminated urban myth in California that there is a mysterious tax loophole in Proposition 13 for owners of commercial properties needs to be simply explained so that the public can understand that there is no such loophole. A recent news article in the May...

I have some questions I would like to ask and get a general idea of the thoughts of my fellow Freepers Last night I am watching O’Reilly – please no comments on why. It’s a long story. Anyway, he is talking to Beckel about his unConstitutional law he would like to see the government implement. As a side note, how does he reconcile in his mind when he states the government can’t protect people and then in the next breath wants the government to enact another law to make it more powerful. Anyway, Beckel makes a statement that people living...

Every TV network is talking about "the loophole that allows anyone to buy a firearm online." Huh? To the best of my knowledge only an FFL can buy or sell a firearm across state lines, and even then, not online. The buyer has to supply a copy of his FFL with the order. Is there such a thing as "buying a gun over the internet" or is this just another case of media corruption?

People across the political spectrum, from left to right and back again, seem to revel in perverse delight when comparing the policies of a political foe to those of the Nazis. Sometimes, they will skip the group comparisons and head straight into drawing personal parallels between the individual in question and Adolf Hitler. The practice is so onerous that, in the Dark Ages of the internet (1990), an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation named Mike Godwin coined what has become known as Godwin's Law. It states that, the longer and more involved an argument becomes, the more likely a...

Citing this data as evidence of how many firearms are currently purchased through private sales not subject to background checks is akin to citing data about current seat belt usage that is derived from a limited sample taken years before a mandatory seat belt law went into effect or before cars were even required to have seat belts. We all know that, according to a phrase popularized by Mark Twain, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Citing such limited and outdated data over and over again on a matter of this magnitude, however, is going...

Among comments to my last piece, “Lautenberg gun show bill as bad as expected,” several were from well-meaning gun owners who honestly questioned why S. 843 – ostensibly submitted to close the “gun show loophole” – is really so bad. A typical and knowledgeable comment went like this: “I am a very pro-gun person. I own a couple of rifles and I will never support any [‘assault weapon’ ban]. I don't even support the ‘86 [McClure-Volkmer] automatic ban. But background checks should be required for any and every sale. If that means transferring it at the dealer, then fine. "But...